Charlotte got up.
“I’m glad you told me. I felt that perhaps I had given offence in some way. I knew from Mabel that Mrs. Bettelheim and the children had been asked to the christening, and that Mr. Duke had been invited to bring the little girl; it seemed rather pointed leaving us out. Now I understand.”
That’s good, thought Penny. There’s enough for us all to worry about, goodness knows, without making things up. Out loud she said:
“Matter of fact, they wouldn’t have been likely to ask you anyway. You aren’t their type and nothing is worse at any sort of party than the wrong people in the middle of it.”
Jenny was saying, in other words, just that to Paula. Paula was arranging a bank of snowdrops round the cake stand.
“Very kind of Lady Nettel to give that cake. I was afraid we ought to ask them and Mrs. Dill to the christening, but Jack said they wouldn’t want to come. I’m awfully glad; I feel such a fool with those sort of people.”
Paula picked up a snowdrop that had fallen on the floor. She looked round at the pink and blue room. She thought of the kleiner Wurm sleeping in the bedroom. She thought of Jack Willis. Such happiness! It was good there were foolish young people who saw only their own happiness.
“I do not think it is necessary to feel a fool. There is much here they all, especially Penny, would wish to have.”
“You mean because of her husband?”
Paula did not answer. She seemed to be engrossed in her decorations. Jenny was too happy and too excited to notice. Singing, she went down the passage to the kitchen to fetch a pile of plates. She did not think of the Jenny who, barely a month before, had crept up this same passage pursued by a long-fingered shadow. Indeed she had almost forgotten her. The past months seemed hidden in a mist; presently the mist would become fog which would come down and blot the month right out. In a few months she would deny the long-fingered shadow even to herself.
John had been riding in the park. Penny was in the hall when he came in. She greeted him with her usual arm’s-length casualness that never failed to hurt.
“Hallo. Cold out, isn’t it?”
He kissed her.
“How’s the ’flu? You don’t look up to much.” He hurried on, anxious to seem natural. “Don’t know why any one should look up to much, this damn government ruinin’ the country. You read the white paper?”
“Only what’s in The Times.”
“Ruin, that’s what’s facin’ us.” John was glad of this casual meeting; he had been wanting to run into Penny. “Strong enough to have a ride one day soon? Don’t forget I gave you that money for ridin’ as part of your Christmas present.”
Penny had moved but now she stopped. For all her poker face John could sense she was in two minds whether or not to say something.
“I say, Dad, would you mind if we took Jane Duke with us? I promised Freda Duke I’d teach her to ride.”
John, too, could hide his feelings. What lengths Penny would go to ensure she was not alone with him. If only he had spoken to Penny about that night right away, or at least when Bill was killed; but he had not, and now it was too late—or was it? If he insisted on having it out would Penny be nearer to him or so resentful she moved herself further away than ever? He was sure he had to ride with Penny and the little girl, or not ride with Penny.
“Very well, my dear, if it pleases you. Give me a ring and I’ll get on to the stables.”
John stumped up the stairs, hands deep in his pockets, head bent. The country was in a terrible state. He hated living in London; stupid sort of life, nothing to do. None of it would be so bad if only he could clear things with Penny. There was nothing Penny could have done that would make him love her less. Why couldn’t she trust him?
Charlotte was crossing the passage. She saw John before he saw her. Her own worries in one instant were shoved to one side. Darling old John! How depressed he looked.
“I thought I’d put an electric fire here. It’s getting colder again . . .” She broke off, attempting to catch at the tail of an idea. The idea ran so fast she could hardly touch its tail let alone hold it. Were they wrong in living here? John wasn’t happy? She hated it—the servants hated it. The idea ran off, its heels kicking up a shower of contradictions. Of course they had to stay here—Peasefield House was sold—where else would they live? She said: “Nice to be the King and Queen going to South Africa.”
John tucked one of her hands through his arm and squeezed it to his side. Anyway, he had Charlotte. She was a never failing source of happiness and never more so than when she was at her most inconsequential.
It was all very well to have decided not to go to the christening, but Mabel and Hannah, sitting over their tea, felt they were missing life as they listened to the buzz of voices which filtered down the back stairs. Hannah gazed drearily at the ceiling.
“Mrs. Parks will tell us what’s said.”
Mabel dismissed that proudly.
“I don’t care what’s said. I know the cake’s good. I doubt if any of their sort of friends know a good cake when they taste it.” There was silence for a time, both women is picturing the scene overhead. The table with the cake as centre piece. The young Willises proudly showing off their baby. Hannah said:
“Little Jane will be enjoying it. I’m glad he took her to the church, being brought up a proper little heathen.”
Mabel was not a great church-goer. As cook she could always explain away her absence by her work. As a young kitchen maid she had been forced to attend family prayers, but only under duress. “You’ll go, my girl,” the cook of the day had insisted. “Do you good. I’d go myself only I can’t leave my breakfasts.” The part about not leaving her breakfasts had been an obvious lie, for Mabel cooked the breakfast, so family prayers had rankled at the back of her mind ever since, and made her touchy about religion. Hannah, on the other hand, was a great church-goer, and was inclined to look smug when she had attended and Mabel had not. Mabel was convinced there was more meant by the word “heathen” than was said.
“There’s other places for praying besides a church. I can pray just as well in my kitchen, as I dare say Mr. Duke does in his study.” She stopped there, her eyes twinkling as a low joke came into her mind. She did not voice it for it was beyond Hannah’s understanding; instead she said: “A bit of praying might do her no harm.” She lowered her voice. “She wasn’t home at all last night.”
Hannah, since her experience in the hall, had disliked more than ever Mabel’s gossip about Mrs. Duke.
“How do you know?”
“Saw her come in this morning. I wonder he stands for it.” She poured herself out another cup of tea. “It’s my belief he wants to be rid of her, and I don’t blame him. I think he’s doing cat to her mouse. One day he’ll catch her and that will be that. Nobody’s going to tell me he doesn’t know.”
Hannah saw the gleam in Mabel’s eye, which she knew only too well meant rude talk to come. She got up.
“I must take in my drawing-room tea.”
Charlotte was restless. There were two or three letters to post; it was cold but not raining; she would walk down to Shepherd Market and post them, and buy a few flowers if the florist was still open. She met Penny coming up the square.
“My dear Penny, what are you doing? You ought to be keeping warm.”
“I’m just going in. I’ve been fetching the rations. I felt so foul that I didn’t think anything could make me worse, even standing in a queue. I was wrong.”
Penny’s head was bent so she did not see a woman standing on the front steps until she was almost on top of her. As she apologised she looked into a face round, fat and faintly reminiscent of a raspberry ice cream, so thick and so doll-like was the make-up. A hat festooned with feathers was perched on top of brassy hair. Penny was going into the house when the woman stopped her. She had round, rather childish-looking blue eyes,
which were full of excitement. She pointed at Charlotte’s retreating back.
“Does she live here?”
Penny might be feeling below par but she kept her head. She gazed with a perfectly blank face after Charlotte and said, in a voice which should have kept any one from being inquisitive:
“Who?”
The woman on the steps was far too absorbed in Charlotte to notice Penny’s tone.
“Mrs. Ternon, you were talking to her. The number of times I’ve wondered where that woman had got to. I was saying only yesterday, ‘Poor creature,’ I said, ‘I wonder where she is now.’ Then up I come for the christening and I see her talking to you. Fate, you might say. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
Penny felt a faint stirring of life in her veins. Here was she bored to death after ’flu. It couldn’t do Charlotte any harm if she got the low down on her past. In fact, it might do her a bit of good; she might be helpful if she knew what it was all about. Nobody was better at turning on sweetness and charm than Penny when she felt like it.
“Was it a lovely christening? I hear the baby’s a sweetie. Are you a godmother?”
The woman chuckled.
“You’ll never guess who I am. Everybody says ‘Never! I won’t believe it,’ but it’s true, I’m the baby’s grandmother. I look too young, I know, but I’m Jenny Willis’s mother. Of course she married when she was only a child.”
Mumsie! Of course, thought Penny. Why didn’t I guess? She’s more madly Mumsie than I even hoped. Still exuding charm and sweetness Penny laid a hand on Mumsie’s arm.
“You must come and drink the baby’s health. My flat’s on the ground floor.”
Mumsie needed no persuading. She followed Penny in.
“As a matter of fact, dear, a little drink-a-boo is just what the old lady needs.” She lowered her voice. “Can you imagine, dear, just tea and coffee offered upstairs. That’s the Willises all over. Go round for Christmas dinner and you’re lucky if you get a sip of port. There’s never been anything like that in the Parsons family. As a matter of fact, my husband—he’s dead now—he was a bit inclined to . . .” Mumsie raised an arm and gave a graphic imitation of throwing back a drink. “That’s how he came to pass over.”
Penny pulled forward an armchair and gave Mumsie a cigarette. She took a bottle of champagne from the cupboard.
“I’ve had ’flu; somebody sent me this champagne as a pick-me-up. I hate drinking alone.”
The day had been tiring. Mumsie had got on her best shoes and they were a shade too tight. She stretched her feet in front of her and unbuttoned her squirrel coat, displaying a chest upholstered in black satin and decorated in pearls.
“Bubbly! Too acid for me, really, but what I say to the boys is, ‘Give me pleasure to-day and let to-morrow’s acidity take care of itself.’”
Penny poured champagne into two large glasses. She was enjoying herself. She could see that Mumsie was the sort that could be led into the wildest indiscretions.
“I’d never have anything to drink if it wasn’t for my men friends.”
Mumsie looked at Penny in some surprise. Too pale, too thin and too B.B.C. about the voice she would have said. Wearing a wedding ring so somebody had fancied her, but divorced from the sound of her. Still, you never could tell and she seemed to have the right ideas.
“I’ve some wonderful friends too, Mrs.——?”
“Dill.”
“Such nice boys Freddie and Dougie are. Well, not boys really, though they’re still boys to me. I’ll take a bet with you there’ll be a bottle waiting when I get home. They live at Hove, quite close to me. They’re a wonderful example of friendship. I often say, ‘I don’t know how you two have kept together all these years.’ Started sharing their little flat after world war one and still sharing it. They’re wonderful neighbours and wonderful pals.”
Penny stretched herself out in the chair opposite Mumsie. In the bubbles in her glass she could almost see Freddie and Dougie. She would have liked to hear more about them, but they were not the reason why she was expending champagne on Mumsie.
“Did you say you knew that woman I was talking to?”
Mumsie wriggled more comfortably into her chair.
“Mrs. Ternon. Does she live here?”
Penny shook her head.
“But you know her?”
“A little.”
“Don’t you know who she is?” Penny again shook her head. Mumsie drew herself together; she enjoyed startling people. “Her son is Peter Ternon. Now, do you remember?”
The name did mean something to Penny, though she could not think what.
“Sounds madly familiar.”
Mumsie took the stage like an actress.
“Familiar! I’ll say it is. Queer the name’s never struck you, for it’s an odd one. You put your mind back to before the war; an old woman robbed with violence. Emeralds stolen . . .”
Penny remembered. There had been a cause celébre, a nasty, sordid crime carried out by what sounded like a nasty, sordid, young man, who had been in trouble since he was a child. Charlotte’s son! Penny felt remotely sick; she had meant Mumsie to amuse, not horrify, her. She got up and refilled their glasses and gave Mumsie another cigarette and lit one for herself. She managed to sound not too interested.
“How long did he get?”
“Ten years, and the cat. He was lucky he didn’t hang, really, for the poor old woman nearly died. Scars on her head to this day, they say. Dougie and Freddie knew him, well, not to say knew him exactly, but they had a drink with him sometimes. He was only nineteen when it happened. I saw her once; I’d friends who lived opposite her flat, that’s why I recognised her. Very snooty they thought she was, but I don’t suppose she’s snooty now. You can say what you like, but you don’t have a queer son like that unless you’re queer yourself. Dougie was saying that he ought to be out soon if he’s behaved himself.”
The pieces of Charlotte’s life fell into place in Penny’s mind. Those monthly journeys; they would be to Dartmoor or Maidstone or wherever the boy was. Charlotte’s uproar about Brighton. No wonder! She was the sort to detest any kind of publicity, but that sordid publicity must have done something to her. It would be impossible, even with your name changed, to believe that people had forgotten, that there was not someone who would say “That’s Mrs. Ternon,” particularly people from Brighton, who would have looked upon the case as their especial crime. For a moment she wondered if her father knew and then was certain that he did. Charlotte was not the shabby type and it would be shabby to marry a man like John and not warn him of so revolting a skeleton in the cupboard. No wonder the wedding had taken place quietly and Charlotte had not been produced until she was Lady Nettel. Where on earth had John and Charlotte met? That was queer, but wherever they had met, and whatever the son was like, Charlotte was grand, there was no altering that. Ten years. Ten years’ sentence before the war and that was nearly eight years ago; you got remittances or something; could that ghastly young man be coming out? What on earth was Charlotte going to do with him? It was difficult to ship people abroad nowadays. Even respectable citizens waited a hell of a time for visas and all the rest of it. What chance would there be of getting rid of a criminal? Poor old Charlotte! Penny felt a cad. Mumsie ceased to be funny and became rather sinister. Penny had thought it would be amusing to hear about Charlotte’s first husband or whatever it was; she had never really believed there was anything much wrong in Charlotte’s life; Charlotte, so cool and poised, detached from all that sort of thing. Now she had pried into a tragedy. Penny could not get rid of Mumsie; there was the champagne to finish and she must be sure that Charlotte was not coming up the front steps when she let Mumsie out. She switched the conversation.
“I’m glad Vera Desirée Jennifer has turned out such a poppet. I thought your daughter might have a bit of trouble; she looked delicate.”
/> Mumsie, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette in the other and a good coal fire warming her legs, could talk about anything.
“As a matter of fact, dear, I was glad myself. She lost her first, you know; she was with me at the time; they’d no home and he was in and out of hospital for his leg. I was glad to have my little girl with me, of course, though when a girl marries you don’t expect her to be living with you, and though my flat’s cosy it’s small. Freddie and Dougie were naughty about it, but I said they must be good, I’d plenty of room for my pals when they came round. It was difficult, though; Jenny was silly about being alone and yet she wouldn’t come out. I don’t know whether it was the war or what it was; I never got in that state when Jenny was coming. Just went on as usual. But Jenny was queer from the beginning, no getting away from that. Then one night I came home and there was a fine to-do. The neighbours had fetched a nurse and the doctor. Imagine in my little flat!”
Penny’s mind skipped agilely after Mumsie’s. She saw the flat and the unfortunate Jenny, and the cosy life that Jenny had interrupted.
“What had she done in the war?”
“She was in the A.T.S. until she married. I think it was the A.T.S. upset her; always had been a shy girl, never put herself forward, she got to feeling she was no good, though why she should I don’t know, for she’d had young Jack after her since she had two pigtails down her back. When the baby was born dead—a boy it would have been—something seemed to go in her. You won’t believe it, dear, but she was quite . . .” Mumsie tapped her forehead.
“How foul for her.”
“And for me. Cry, cry, cry, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, kept saying she was no good and nobody wanted her. Still, I would have kept her with me; after all, she’s my girl, but Dougie and Freddie wouldn’t let me. ‘You’ve got yourself to think of, dear,’ they said, ‘you’re only a shadow of what you were,’ and then Dougie said something which really did frighten me. He said, ‘You can’t be watching all the time and she might throw herself out of a window.’”
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